Raised SoB (Southern Baptist) at about the same time as you. Also in the Deep South.
Generally, I think our local church was sort of SoB Lite or something. Sunday School, Sunday service, done. We lived so far out in the country that church was virtually the only social outlet.
I sure had it a lot easier than some of my cousins, who belonged to the Fire-Baptized Pentecostal Holiness church. I got dragged to some of their services as a kid and thought those people were nuts, compared to us boring Baptists. Screaming gibberish (i.e., talking in tongues), falling in the floor, running around the church yelling when they "got in the Spirit," etc. And their damn Sunday services gave me a good working definition of "eternity."
But when I was 8 or 9 years old, our church hosted a fire-breathing "Special Revival" preacher. He hammered hard on the idea that anyone could die AT ANY SECOND. If unbaptized, you would go straight to Hell where you could see your former family members laughing at you from Heaven.
That scared me so much that I answered the Altar Call that very night and got baptized the next week.
Like you, all these years later I'm still sort of pissed off that I fell for that sleazy sales pitch. But as you note, once a person "accepted the Lord," there was massive positive reinforcement from relatives, neighbors, etc. And we were just kids, after all.
I've been a happy atheist for many years now. I just spent 2 weeks at home for the holidays and see evidence that things are actually changing back there. Reading the local newspaper, I saw several letters to the editor from "out" atheists in that area. Which amazed me.
One letter from a woman said (from memory): "I never had real peace of mind until I got rid of religion and became an atheist."
Atheist Amen, sister!
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